History has a significant effect in language attitudes in Finland and abroad (for an Irish example, see Ó Riagáin and Ó Gliasáin 1994). According to Dufva, Lähteenmäki and Isoherranen (1996), Finnish cultural identity is still influenced by the nationalist movement from over a hundred years ago. They give an example of a participant in their study who, laughing, said that it is in his genes to detest Swedish. Dufva, Lähteenmäki and Isoherranen (1996: 48) claim that languages such as English do not have political charge and are therefore described through what benefits one can get from learning them, and that is not the same to learn English and Russian. However, it must be noted that these arguments were written almost twenty years ago and it can be argued that we are presently living in an even more globalised world. Although the participants in Dufva, Lähteenmäki and Isoherranen’s (1996) study highly valued languages and language learning, chapter 7 will argue that university students today have quite a different perception of foreign languages.
It is worth briefly describing the status of English in the minds of Finnish people.
English is a global language and its usefulness is easy to note outside the English-speaking countries (Csizér and Kormos 2009, Josephson 2014). Josephson (2014) claims that in Sweden, English has such a dominant role that in certain domains Swedish is hardly spoken. He gives an example from university students of science who cannot speak about their field of study in Swedish. Josephson (2014: 134) calls this “self-colonisation”, claiming that Swedes have voluntarily let English take over in sciences, for instance. According to the study by Leppänen et al. (2009) which is presented below, Finnish people are not worried about Finland being anglicised despite the fact that Finland, like Sweden, is indeed increasingly affected by the English language.
Leppänen et al. (2009) surveyed Finnish people’s (n=1,495) attitudes towards and perceptions of the English language in Finland and in their lives in 2007. The study was extensive regarding the number of people involved. However, Leppänen et al.
(2009) note that not all age groups responded to the posted survey equally actively, and only about 50 per cent of the planned sample sent it back. Similarly to Karjalainen and Lehtonen’s (2005) study (see section 3.2), it is possible that those more interested in languages were more likely to answer the survey. Those not caring about languages, therefore, could be underrepresented in Leppänen’s et al.
(2009) study. Furthermore, the study is eight years old and although that is not a very long time, Finland is internationalising at a growing pace, which may affect the results. Despite these limitations, Leppänen’s et al. (2009) report can give us some indication of Finnish people’s stand on the English language.
Leppänen et al. (2009) discovered that Finnish people study many foreign languages and use them at work and in their free time. English is perceived as more important than Swedish. It is seen as an important language in working life but not a threat to domestic languages and Finnish culture (cf. Josephson 2014).
Finns value English the most in terms of internationalisation, but also think it is important to know other languages. They perceive their level of English as rather good but want to learn more. Finns have also noticed that language requirements vary a great deal depending on the situation, for example in working life (see chapter 3 for more discussion on languages in Finnish working life). Finnish people use English in their free time and also at work, but young people use English the
most. Using English in Finland is not often active: rather than speaking or writing, Finns listen, watch and read English. (Leppänen et al. 2009.)
Chapter 2 has defined the term perceptions and then presented previous studies on perceptions of languages and language learning. The following chapter will move on to describe perceptions of the role of languages in university and in Finnish working life.
3 PERCEIVED LANGUAGE REQUIREMENTS IN UNIVERSITY AND IN WORKING LIFE
In Finland, universities have legal requirements concerning their operating language, communication and language studies and graduates’ language skills.
Universities also have their own language policies and strategies. Language requirements for universities and university graduates are described in the Government Decree on University Degrees (794/2004, 1039/2013). It states that university graduates must have “proficiency in Finnish and Swedish which is required of civil servants in bilingual public agencies and organisations --- and which is necessary for their field” and “skills in at least one foreign language needed to follow developments in the field and to operate in an international environment” (6 §). As is stated in the Decree, university students must take part in communication and language studies as a part of their Bachelor’s degree (10 §).
The Government Decree on University Degrees sets requirements not only for university graduates but also universities. It states that a university must help students achieve “adequate” communication and language skills for working in their field and in international settings at Bachelor’s level (1039/2013, 7 §) and
“good” skills at Master’s level (12 §). Universities are also to provide a graduate with a degree certificate that shows the graduate’s language skills (26 §).
The present study is conducted in the context of the University of Jyväskylä, which is why the general language policies of this university are presented next.
According to the University of Jyväskylä Language Policy (2012: 6), “knowledge, competence and expertise are built through language”. The staff and the students are “encouraged to enhance their multilingual and multicultural competence”
which is achieved by fostering the Finnish language and culture as well as further
developing the university community’s communication and cultural skills in both Swedish and foreign languages. The Language Policy says that employees today are required to have excellent Finnish skills and fluent English, and that other fluent or partial language skills are of an advantage in the labour market. This is why all students are offered opportunities to develop diverse language and intercultural skills in their studies. Students also have a responsibility to develop their skills for working in multilingual and multicultural environments and the university is required to offer the students help with discipline-specific communication. As a result, the University of Jyväskylä graduates will have diverse, high-quality language and cultural skills as well as competence to work in multilingual and multicultural environments. The Language Policy further states that a multilingual and multicultural working environment is “the starting point and resource” for teaching. Students are encouraged to participate in an international exchange programme. Furthermore, the multicultural and multilingual home campus must be recognised and developed as it is an important learning environment for languages and cultures. (University of Jyväskylä Language Policy 2012: 6-8.)
As stated earlier, the empirical part of the present study focuses on first year physics students in the University of Jyväskylä. The language policies of the whole university naturally apply in the Department of Physics. All students study both domestic languages and at least one foreign language, but requirements vary from faculty to faculty. The Faculty of Mathematics and Science (2015), which the Department of Physics is a part of, requires two ECTS credits of oral or written communication, two ETCS credits of English and two credits of the second domestic language. As most Finnish universities principally operate in Finnish (University Law 558/2009, University of Jyväskylä Language Policy 2012: 1), in practice the oral or written communication is Finnish and the second domestic for most students is Swedish.
The Language Act (423/2003, 1§, 2§) states that Finland is a bilingual country and that Finnish-speakers and Swedish-speakers have equal opportunities to use their first languages. To guarantee public services in both of the national languages, public sector workers must have adequate Finnish and Swedish skills. Bilingual authorities must always provide services in Finnish and in Swedish and show the public that they are using both languages (23 §). Furthermore, public enterprises
must provide services and information in both languages (24 §). If a private operator has been assigned to a public administrative task, the same language legislation applies to it as to the public sector. In other cases, the Language Act does not apply to the private sector (25 §), in which many physics graduates will probably work. All officials do not necessarily have to be able to provide all services in Finnish and Swedish as long as the same services are available in both languages (Ministry of Justice 2009b). An authority can also provide better services than the law requires by accepting documents in foreign languages, for instance (2 §, Ministry of Justice 2009a). The Act on the Knowledge of Languages Required of Personnel in Public Bodies (2003/424), which is also known as the language skills act, states that an authority must ensure that its personnel have adequate language skills to provide services stated in the Language Act.
As described above, the Government Decree on University Degrees and the University of Jyväskylä Language policy have set language requirements for university students. Language teachers in higher education have been active in researching students’ perceptions of language studies, and some of these findings are presented in section 3.1. The legal language requirements for those working in the public sector were also described above. However, different workplaces may have very different language policies and needs, and language laws do not apply in the private sector. This chapter describes university graduates’ (section 3.2) and their employers’ (section 3.3) perceptions of language requirements in the workplace in order to sketch possible scenarios which the interviewees of the present study may face in their future working life. Section 3.4, in turn, reports previous studies on third level students’ perceptions of foreign languages in relation to their future work and will show that there is a variety of needs and expectations that language teachers can face.
3.1 Perceptions of language studies in higher education
The present study is conducted in the context of a discipline-specific language course in university and therefore it is worth discussing previous research on students’ perceptions of language studies in higher education. The Helsinki University of Technology (TKK) Language Centre surveyed engineer students’
(n=77) perceptions of different aspects of English teaching in 2008-2009. The students were asked to rate 15 different themes of English education, such as
grammar, pronunciation, technical writing and environmental awareness, on a scale from 1 to 10. The results of the study show that the students, regardless of how many years they had been studying, ranked language skills needed in
“meetings and negotiations” and “leadership and managerial communications”
highest of all the 15 aspects they could choose from (Lappalainen 2010: 396).
Lappalainen (2010: 396-397) notes that both meetings and managerial communication have to do with persuasive and mobilising interaction, and concludes that the engineer students appear to be conscious of what is expected of them in the workplace. She claims that Finnish engineering students already have a high enough level of English to work in their field, so the TKK Language Centre should concentrate on teaching them communication skills and field-specific English needed in the workplace. According to Josephson (2014), we may overestimate our English skills, thinking that we manage in everyday situations, but academic professionals must often have advanced language skills. It is therefore important to offer these field-specific English courses even if the students have fluent everyday English.
According to Brown (2009: 47), recent studies have indicated that students’
perceptions of second language (L2) learning and teaching might be relevant to efficient L2 learning and should not be disregarded as unimportant, non-scientific or naïve. In his quantitative study, Brown compared students’ (n=83) and teachers’
(n=49) perceptions of effective second language teaching at the University of Arizona with the help of a Likert-scale questionnaire. The results of his study suggest that there is a mismatch between teachers’ and students’ views. Teachers preferred a communicative approach with grammar embedded into different types of tasks whereas the students preferred explicit grammar tasks and error correcting. First and second year students’ perceptions differed from each other.
According to Brown, this is due to the second year students’ more advanced language skills. The first year students were more in favour of specific grammar teaching and error correction than the second year students. (Brown 2009: 55.) It must be noted that the students in Brown’s study had only been studying the L2 in question for one or two years and therefore their perceptions of language learning might be very different from those of Finnish university students who have usually been studying English since the age of nine. However, the study is a good reminder that there is a possibility that students and teachers can have a very different
understanding of language teaching or learning, which could hinder effective learning. Brown (2009: 55) suggests that teachers should make their teaching methods transparent to the students in order to help them understand the importance of input, output and negotiation of meaning.
Komarova and Tiainen (2007) studied business students’ experiences of language studies in the North Karelia University of Applied Sciences using a survey with open-ended questions. They found that the students were mostly satisfied with their language studies and were particularly happy with the work-oriented approach and the focus on oral communication. However, this study was limited with only 32 respondents. 20 of the respondents were mature students whose prior experiences of language studies could have differed from those of the younger respondents. Komarova and Tiainen focused on Russian studies, which the students had only started at the university of applied sciences. Therefore, parts of this study are comparable with Brown’s (2009). In the case of both of these studies, it is important to consider the students’ background since the students most likely reflect their current studies with their previous experiences in language learning. It is impossible to answer solely based on the information from the two papers why Komarova’s and Tiainen’s (2007) respondents were happier with their language studies than those of Brown (2009). The students in the Finnish university of applied sciences were all business students whereas the respondents in Brown’s study were students from different fields of study. For some students of both groups the language studies were optional and for others they were compulsory. Komarova and Tiainen (2007: 38) suggest that the respondents in their study were more internationally-oriented than students of some other fields. Brown’s (2009) study does not reveal whether the University of Arizona’s language courses focus on working life the same way as do the ones in Finnish higher education, and whether that could affect the results.
As stated previously, students’ experiences may affect their perceptions of language learning in many ways. Martin et al. (2013) found that students at the University of Vaasa had varied views on how languages should be taught in university. (The study is described in more detail in section 3.2.) Some students wanted to practise oral communication whereas others preferred similar teaching to upper secondary school. According to the students, university language studies
focused too much on grammar and writing. Some students found the timing of the language courses challenging. Others wished that they had got into the course already at the beginning of their studies as they would have needed the skills taught in the course when reading field-specific literature in foreign languages, for instance. (Martin et al. 2013: 56-57.) Good experiences from upper secondary school resulted in the perception that this type of teaching was the best way of learning languages. On the contrary, some students had perhaps noticed that they learned languages or became more confident by speaking them and therefore preferred teaching that emphasised oral communication. Consequently, the students’ perceptions were influenced by their previous experiences in language learning during different stages in their education. As we can see from the studies by Martin et al. (2013), Komarova and Tiainen (2007) and Brown (2009), students’
perceptions of language studies in higher education can vary a great deal depending on their experiences in language learning at school and in higher education and it is therefore impossible to create a formula that will work for all.
3.2 University graduates’ perceptions of foreign languages in the